Photographing Koshirae is hard! (and different than blades)

[ChrisM]

It turns out that not only is photographing nihonto difficult, photographing Koshiare is also quite tricky. I've been slowly dialing in my photo setup, and figured tonight I would branch out into Koshiare.

 

The setup I'm using here is:

 

1. Shooting on Plexiglass, over a black background. This is essentially the Darcy Trick, that has been pretty well documented. Same basic setup as blades. 
2. 2x GVM Professional grade RBG light tubes. These things are simply fantastic. I cannot overstate this. Being able to tweak lighting for color, intensity, and other variables from an iPhone while shooting is almost like cheating. And these things put out flawless light. 
3. Big Tripod, with a boom arm. Added counterweights to hold it in place. The stability is fantastic. I've been shooting (mostly) with a 50mm lens, and with the swords about 12" from the floor, the camera is over my head. Using a wider lens means the camera is lower, but perspective starts to look weird at less than 40mm. 
4. Nikon Camera and various lenses. I'm shooting at ISO 200, and F8. Whitebalance is hard set at 5600 (matching the GVM lights), and shutter speed varies depending on lighting. 
5. Shooting tethered via Lightroom directly to a laptop. 

 

The hardest parts of this are twofold:

1. Perfect focus is hard. The camera is up high enough that you can't see, and even shooting at F8, the focus is hard. Lightroom doesn't support zooming in on live view, so this means using a different tethering tool to get focus just right, then swapping over to Lightroom to shoot. Once things are set the camera is steady and it's just about adjusting lights. 
2. Lighting. Reflective surfaces. Glare. Ugh. Double Ugh. Koshi are as challenging as Nihonto. The angles are more challenging due to the curved surfaces. 

 

Post processing is also a bit of an adventure. With blades, there's no real point in doing HDR merges or exposure blending. With the Koshiare, it's a bit more flexible which is both a blessing and a curse! 

 

In the first shot below, I added in some of the NBTHK paperwork for artistic feel, and think it came out well. In the single shot of the wakizashi, I just left it on a black background which is nice, but a bit boring. 

[rematron]

Nice job, Chris! Looks great!

[O koumori]

Hey Chris,

Just curious; what tethering tool are you using for focus?

Thanks

Dan

[ChrisM]

Quote

Just curious; what tethering tool are you using for focus?

 

That was a challenge - and still is. For the shots here, I used Nikon Camera Control Pro 2in "Trial Mode" for focus. That allows me to do live view at 200% size, which means I can get focus to be just about perfect. Once focus is locked in, I exit Nikon's software and switch over to lightroom for the shooting / capturing. 

 

My honest opinion is that both programs are poor for tethered shooting. Camera Control Pro 2, in addition to be ancient and expensive, is lousy and I'm unwilling to pay for it. Lightroom is good for general photo management but terrible for tethered shooting.

 

I remain in search of a great tethered shooting solution. The specific issues I have:

1. CCP2 is expensive. Nikon software should be free when you buy their top-of-the-line camera. 
2. CCP2 crashes. Often. 
3. CCP2 has a UX that is, to put it mildly, not intuitive. 
4. CCP2 only recognized my camera about 1/2 the time. 
5. Lightroom doesn't support live view in a useful way. 
6. Lightroom always shoots the RAW and JPG file. I have no use in this situation for the JPG.
7. Lightroom always shows me the processed JPG, which means getting color and exposure "just right" is damn near impossible. 
8. Lightroom doesn't support bracketing. I want to fire off +2, +1, 0, -1, -2 exposure sequences but this isn't supported.

There is a list of other minor frustrations, but with a bit of patience capturing images isn't too bad. 

 

[vajo]

Great outcome 🖖 

Well done.

[GeorgeLuucas]

Thanks for sharing Chris, your photos are really impressive! They look professionally done, and like they belong in a Nihonto magazine 

 

I really dig the koshirae also. I hope to see your photo setup one of these days!

 

Cheers,

-Sam 

 

 

[O koumori]

13 hours ago, ChrisM said:

That was a challenge - and still is. For the shots here, I used Nikon Camera Control Pro 2in "Trial Mode" for focus. That allows me to do live view at 200% size, which means I can get focus to be just about perfect. Once focus is locked in, I exit Nikon's software and switch over to lightroom for the shooting / capturing. 

Thanks!!